6 thoughts on “Everyone For Themselves”

I’m not seeing it. From the article, it looks like they evacuated people staying in hotels first because as tourists they were least likely to have resources to fall back on if they were trapped in the disaster area. That actually makes a lot of sense if you’re trying to manage your rescue efforts in a way that removes as many of the most vulnerable from the area as quickly as you can.

The following day, looters were seen hauling food, water and televisions from shops, and videos featuring predominantly black people raiding shops circulated online. Some took to social media to blame the thieving on non-whites and characterized the white evacuees as innocents escaping the chaos.

Tin [France’s Representative Council of Black Associations spokeman -ed] said the island’s poorer residents were doing what they had to after an ineffective government response.

“Doing what they had to” involved stealing televisions? Do tell me how that is going to help you survive in a hurricane devastated wasteland with no power! I’ll wait…

Funny how Tin’s demands for reparations and complaints that wages are lower in St. Martin’s than in mainland France also come up. Last I checked, wages are lower here than in NYC — should I demand higher wages here because of that?

Look, France’s treatment of Caribbean slaves makes Southern plantations look like nirvana in comparison, but it still doesn’t mean that because your ancestors were mistreated 200 years ago you should get something in return. If so, Britain owes the Irish of the Potato Famine years a lot of money… Make an argument that current policy is preventing you from advancing (and believe me, France’s policy towards its territories can make that an easy argument), but to me this ancestral appeal is idiotic at best.

Seems to me that reparations are more about legalizing theft and looting, much like stealing those TVs, than actual defensible policy.

Regarding reparations, the simple, and diplomatic, approach is to point out that it would simply hurt a lot of people who had nothing to do with the original crimes.

The somewhat harsher, but probably necessary, point to make is that Malaysia tried reparations, and when I was there in 2003, I read that a few years after mass confiscation of wealth from the Chinese and Indian minorities, the national proportions of wealth were….exactly the same as they had been before.

The same goes here; a black comedian noted that a few weeks after the reparations checks were issued, all of that money would be spent and gone with little/nothing to show for it. The ugly reality is that unearned money gets wings, just as Stanley and Danko demonstrated regarding inheritances and such in The Millionaire Next Door.

Regarding reparations, the simple, and diplomatic, approach is to point out that it would simply hurt a lot of people who had nothing to do with the original crimes.

The instant response would be that even though they had nothing to do with the original crimes, their lives are better due to the wealth benefits received by the slave owners.

Show me. I’ll wait.
(h/t Nerdbert)

It’s been said that this country was built on the backs of the slaves. I wholeheartedly disagree. This country was built on the backs of the soldiers who fought for our freedom, and the workers of the industrial era from the 1800s to the 1900s. The closest concepts that I think could be broadly applied as an alternative statement is “The soldiers and workers who enabled/built this country were clothed by the cotton picked by the slaves, and their nerves were calmed by smoking the tobacco harvested by the slaves.”